Stellaris - first other life

I've recently been playing space exploration game Stellaris. I've livetweeted random bits of my first few sessions here: https://twitter.com/search?q=stellaris%20cartesiandaemon&src=typd

It makes an effort to capture the sense of wonder of space exploration extending from pulp scifi, through classic scifi, and up to things like StarTrek, and does surprisingly well. It's not perfect, all the random cool stuff is not as central to the game as it might be, but it does a good job of representing, venturing out between the stars and finding mysterious relics of powerful civilisations, awe-inspiring natural space fauna, and squabbling other civilisations.

In this playthrough it took me a while to find anyone else! I kept expanding, trying to balance my economy -- the difficult balance of how much to invest in infrastructure, how much to invest in precautionary military defences, how much to invest in scientific research which pays off in the long run...

First I met space fauna -- space whales and amoebas. You can hunt them for parts, but my lovely pluralist pacifist Duckbills don't, instead studying them, learning to avoid antagonising them, bypassing them, and eventually getting some technological innovations from the study.

Then I met the first actual alien empire, sadly militaristic fungus-racists (the racism was by funguses to everyone, not against funguses). And for quite a long time they were the only other people "out there". They seem to have comparable tech, I'm not sure who would win if there was a fight, but I'm expecting it to happen.

I explored diplomatic options, but they already hate everyone, you need to butter them up a LOT before they'll even trade with you (trading things to them for no return), and I wasn't hopeful that even then I'd be able to get their opinion of me high enough to do the things that would turn them into an ally (defensive pacts, free movement of people, etc). So for now I left them be.

But I precautionarily built some outposts at the chokepoints between me and them. I knew that would irritate them -- partially, there's a negative to diplomacy for having adjacent borders, partially they probably want to expand through there, and partially in order to stop them just driving through to build outposts near my capital I have to officially close my borders to their ships, which pretty much tanks diplomatic hopes. They started it, they closed borders to me almost immediately, but while I was hoping for peace, I waited to do that.

Building the outposts was quite a lot of drama itself. I kept seeing their science vessels and worrying they'd survey the system and claim it first. Before I learned how to avoid antagonising the space amoeba, I lost TWO construction vessels to them, when I thought I could carefully skirt round them. It's a right pain moving construction vessels at all, usually they sit at home building mining stations, but in this case I needed to get them out a fair way through space. And now I'm not sure if I should keep the extra ones or disband them.

I looked into how the diplomacy works. As an egalitarian pacifist, my species can only initiate a war on one or two grounds. I think I can fight to get back planets I lost to another empire, or possibly planets with many of my main species populating them. And I can fight a war of ideology -- if I can complete defeat the opponent, I can reform their government to an egalitarian pacifist one instead of a xenophobic militaristic one. Which looks more moral than a war of "we hate everyone and just want them to die" that some philosophies get, until someone describes it as a war by "Space Tony Blair" or "Space America".

What I *can't* do is capture just one or two systems from them, to get a spacelane to be able to explore past them, because I don't have any moral justification for it. (I suppose I could declare war and try to sneak my science ship and construction ship through the conflict but that doesn't sound great[1]) I guess in the real world this is why people care so much about controlling ports and canals and so on.

However, what I can do, deliberately or inadvertently, is upgrade my military station on their borders, build a bunch of military ships, and generally bait them until they declare war on me (they're xenophobic militarists and I'm in their way, after all). I can't remember if I can officially insult them through the "insult option -- I think I can if I want to hasten the onset of war, but it only works on these sort of bigot-mongers who are comparable to me in strength and not allied with anyone.

Either way, once they attack me and I have the moral high ground, I think I can THEN conquer their systems if I'm able to.

About this point the Fungoids started escalating the tension anyway so it's probably going to be moot. But I need to make sure I have a navy ready.

And sadly, I think living next to them is making my Duckbills more xenophobic, from their original spiritual/pacifist majority. Hopefully if I meet some other empires they'll stop the trend.

[1] I'm still confused when ships can just keep moving and get out of trouble and when they can't.

Stellaris - startrek

Stellaris has a LOT of mods, they put a lot of effort into making lots of different aspects of the game expansible and creating a pool of enthusiasts. Like, in another game from the same people, Crusader Kings' "now you're playing Game of Thrones, yes with all the politics, good luck" mod :)

Mods can change all sorts of things based on a system of config files and plugins. You can add different races, different planet types, different events, different technologies, both from "create new thing" to "rejig balance to make game more like you like".

There's an actual startrek mod that makes it a startrek game. I know there are official StarTrek games, but they tend to focus on later series when the space seems mostly explored, but stellaris is more like the journey from "leaving earth" to "forming a federation with the other founder races" and "exploring the depths of space and seeing what's out there".

But even without that it's quite StarTrek-y. You discover random planets with poems carved on them by dead races, or abandoned multi-racial habitats floating in the upper atmosphere of gas giants. You send science ships out to explore the galaxy while you expand your holdings close to home. And you discover idiosyncratic squabbling alien races.

Space battles are quite visually impressive if you zoom in. There's not much small scale tactics, so the animation is mostly non-functional, but you can see a fleet of ships hanging in space being attacked by a vast space amoeba, or being circled by pirate vessels, with torpedos flying and lasers flickering.

It made me realise why StarTrek science/diplomatic vessels are packed with guns. Because you really might find anything out there, even if your aim is to randomly study cool stuff, you need a lot of effort to make sure you get back home again.

Stellaris - more other people

After quite a while only meeting the Fungus Bigots and starting to wonder if anyone else was out there, I suddenly met a LOT of other empires.

I sent a science ship exploring round the outer edge of the Fungusoids, it found a couple of planets and some anomalies, it found some dead ends, there's a few points in the galaxy where there's only one or two hyperlanes that connect further round, so I ended up curving back close-ish to the Fungoids on the other side.

And then I ran into a fallen empire! I can't remember what they looked like, but IIRC they were technological preservers, their big plan was to squat in a half-derelict ringworld being more formiddable than anyone else around but then never do anything apart from act supercilious to any young races who stumble upon them.

They came out with such gems like "yes, yes, we've heard it all before" and "stay out of our space or you'll face certain doom, and so forth" and "before you ask, no we will not share our technology." They are the "grumpy empire", not the "bigot empire".

Sadly, their territory included the only other anticlockwise route, other than that owned by the fungusoids. Expansion temporarily curtailed.

However, they were in contact with another empire further round, who eventually heard about me and managed to open communications despite having no physical connection. I refer to them as "Space Antelope Klingons" because they were described as honourable warrior types who looked like Space Antelopes. They were not *very* warm towards me, but they were mildly positive which is an absolute fuckton better than the previous two empires whose attitude amounted to "never".

I fiddled with trade options. They weren't willing to give much, they were willing to trade resources they were short of, but not at a very good rate. And weren't enthusiastic about giving real-time sensor links (so you can see what's going on in their space). But they were quite interested in trading my research (which I hope doesn't give them too much of a boost), and willing to trade communications, i.e. for empires that they know, fill me on the basics and introduce me.

That introduced me to a lot of new empires. All with different beautiful sci-fi cites :)

The most promising were ALSO peaceful egalitarian (or spiritualist) federation builders. They started off very positive and I need to see if they want to trade.

There was also a theocratic monarchy, who were so-so about me, but more positive than not. Not sure what tongue-in-cheek name to apply to them.

There were the someone-or-other reavers, who were FANATICALLY xenophobic, and sadly more expansionist than everyone else put together, including the Fungusoids.

And a fallen empire who REALLY liked me but were unwilling to trade in any fashion whatsoever, I think they think of the younger races like cute pets. They were all "hello! hello! good to meet you! but don't come in!"

And I think maybe one new race I've forgotten.

Everyone disliked the reavers and the reavers will always hate me no matter what, so I can pick up some cheap popularity hating on them. (I think I can't officially 'rival' them unless they border me, but I may be able to do something?)

Alas, the Klingons and the two fluffier empires don't like each other either, so I don't know if I can keep them both on side or not.

And then, after that, ANOTHER race just bimbled into one of my clockwise systems. I had to decode their language myself, it seems like there's still unexplored territory between them and the galactic south empires. They are dubbed Space Napoleons, because they are egalitarian but militaristic. The leader is a Charismatic Reformer. They were cautiously positive about me. I managed to offer a trade deal where we both DID offer an active sensor link, PLUS I offered research and got some mineral income in trade.

However, for better or worse, they're in a state of increasing hostilities with an empire just to the south of them, which between them block off clockwise expansion. Who are XENOPHONES and FANATIC MILITARISTS. And are dubbed "Space Parrot Eagle Evil Roman Empire" because they are a space parrot eagle evil roman empire.

So I hope I can keep borders open with the Napoleons, at least long enough to claim some systems on the other side. Although that spreads me pretty thin. I'm *also* tempted to risk closing borders against the napoleons and hope to keep them sweet some other way, until I've managed to claim as much territory as possible, or at least, grabbed the most valuable systems near my borders.

Or maybe it's a cross between Battlestar Galactica and Eastenders :)

Stellaris - lessons on economy and geopolitics

So, stellaris is clearly not an accurate model of reality, but it can still generate interesting observations.

Balancing the economy is a pain. You need energy and minerals to build anything else. But the more buildings you have, the more energy they use, the more population you have, the more food and consumer goods (made of minerals) you need. And you need to build surface mines/power plants or mining stations to get *more* energy and minerals, but they themselves cost minerals to build and energy upkeep. I think I am actually generating a surplus which is going on technological improvement and so on, but it's also possible I've just expanded a bit much and am only treading water, despite originally having a reasonable energy and mineral surplus.

And you need a military at least defensively, but that also sucks up a lot of upkeep. It is sadly easy to resent everything that costs...

I'm not sure what the right balance was, between researching technology first before expanding much (often recommended online), just sitting in place accumulating a surplus of energy and minerals whenever you run short, vs ploughing everything you can into expansion and hoping for the best.

I guess if I actually sprawl out into all the currently unclaimed systems around, I would outrace the other empires in size. But that would mean, I'd need to spend everything on expansion first, fall behind in tech, and maybe be easy pickings militarily. Ideally I'd establish some bulwarks to block off future territory. But how many bulwarks can I afford, would I be able to hold them?

Geopolitics

The relations with other empires are very abstract, an opinion (and a few related metrics) measuring how they react to you. A positive opinion means they're more willing to agree things, including things that improve opinion over time.

But if there's a really valuable choke point or something... I feel the urge to claim it for myself to just be on the safe side. Or to grab the uninhabited systems between me and Furry Napoleon, even if it temporarily increases tensions. After all, if I have a superior strategic position, I can be nice, but if they do, I don't *know* they'll be nice.

If we had a high trust already maybe we could play nice together. Especially for things like choke points if we trust each other to keep the borders open. I can trust their high opinion is not going to suddenly vanish, just like a trust actual people in the real world if they show themselves trustworthy. But there's no easy way of enforcing "this is my space even if I haven't built anything here" and the ethical thing of letting them have some and trusting them to be future allies not enemies is scary when you have no way of enforcing that.

Multiculturalism

What I *can* do is seek reciprocal free-movement-of-people with other friendly empires, giving me more varied population, and hopefully fewer xenophobes. I'm excited to see who turns up! And my empire is set to accept refugees -- I'm not sure when that happens, but I'm welcoming ready. More population is usually good.

Stellaris - priorities

At first, EVERYTHING was new and I was excited in everything that happened. But I started getting torn when I was running short of resources on multiple fronts.

What I need to do is prioritise. Properly.

That means, working what I *need* to do now. And accepting the things I *want* to do can wait. Even if there's a bit in the middle where I run the game on fast and accumulate resources without *doing* much while I wait to get into a more flexible economic position.

Right now I think that means:

1. On pause, catch up on the things I should have been doing all along but only thought of now (e.g. parking some ships to reduce upkeep? seeing if I want a different faction?)


2. On pause, sort out diplomacy with all the new empires. Find decent trades with anyone willing. Form defensive pacts etc where it feels fairly safe (although maybe delay that if I want the Funges to declare war). Work out who I want to build relations with and who I'm willing to piss off, even if I can't do it quite yet.


3. Don't spend anything else, build up some fleet strength at the frontier where the Funguses are threatening war.


4. Identify key choke points where I can block off territory for myself from other empires. Decide if it's better to take them now or to wait.


5. Within my 'borders', build up a decent positive mineral/energy balance, then decide what to spend on (research/military/expansion). Include diplomacy I can do with other empires.


6. Befriend friendly empires as possible. Take over threatening empires as I can. Probably someone will unleash species 8472 or something before that and everything will change.

(Wait, I used a dreamwidth html list, and for me it renders as '01', '02' etc. How geeky does it think I am?)

Whew, that's a lot I may need to fast forward through. Hm, not sure I can order it any better though.

It does feel like I (and most of the other empires) are behind where people expect us to be at this point in time (I need to check the date, but a fair bit of time has passed, I think).